Does a Buddha Kill?

Greater Coucal 30 May 16“It is true, Kesi, that it isn’t allowable for the Tathāgata to destroy life. However, when a person to be tamed won’t submit to discipline by the gentle method, the stern method, or the method that is both gentle and stern, then the Tathāgata thinks he should not be spoken to and instructed, and his wise fellow monks, too, think he should not be spoken to and instructed. For this, Kesi, is ‘killing’ in the Noble One’s discipline: the Tathāgata thinks one should not be spoken to and instructed, and one’s wise fellow monks, too, think one should not spoken to and instructed.” – AN 4.111 (Bodhi)

“Saccaṁ, kesi. Na tathāgatassa pāṇātipāto kappati. Api ca yo purisadammo saṇhena vinayaṁ na upeti, pharusena vinayaṁ na upeti, saṇhapharusena vinayaṁ na upeti, na taṁ tathāgato vattabbaṁ anusāsitabbaṁ maññati, nāpi viññū sabrahmacārī vattabbaṁ anusāsitabbaṁ maññanti. Vadho heso, kesi, ariyassa vinaye—yaṁ na tathāgato vattabbaṁ anusāsitabbaṁ maññati, nāpi viññū sabrahmacārī vattabbaṁ anusāsitabbaṁ maññantī”ti.

“ကေသိ မှန်ပေ၏၊ မြတ်စွာဘုရားအား သူ့အသက်ကို သတ်ခြင်းသည် မအပ်သည်သာတည်း၊ စင်စစ်သော် ကား ထို ဆုံးမထိုက်သူသည် အကယ်၍ အနုအားဖြင့်လည်း အဆုံးအမ မခံ၊ အကြမ်းအားဖြင့်လည်း့အဆုံးအမ မခံ၊ အနုအကြမ်းအားဖြင့်လည်း အဆုံးအမ မခံခဲ့လျှင် ထိုသူကို မြတ်စွာဘုရားသည် ပြောဆို ဆုံးမထိုက်သူဟူ၍ အသိအမှတ် မပြုတော့ပေ၊ ပညာရှိ သီတင်းသုံးဖော်တို့ကလည်း ပြောဆို ဆုံးမထိုက်သူဟူ၍ အသိအမှတ် မပြုကြကုန်။ ယင်းသို့ အသိအမှတ် မပြုကြခြင်းသည်ပင် မြတ်စွာဘုရား အဆုံးအမ တော်၌ သတ်ပစ်လိုက်သည် မည်ပေ၏။”

Greater Coucal 25 May 16“Thấy vậy, này Kesi, sát sanh không xứng đáng với Như Lai. Nhưng người đáng được điều phục ấy không chịu nhiếp phục với lời nói mềm mỏng, không chịu nhiếp phục với lời nói cứng rắn, không chịu nhiếp phục với lời nói mềm mỏng và cứng rắn, Như Lai nghĩ rằng người ấy không xứng đáng để được nói đến, để được giáo giới. Và các vị đồng Phạm hạnh có trí nghĩ rằng người ấy không xứng đáng để được nói đến, để được giáo giới. Bị giết hại, này Kesi là con người này, trong giới luật của bậc Thánh, bị Như Lai nghĩ rằng không đáng được nói đến, không đáng được giáo giới, bị các vị đồng Phạm hạnh có trí nghĩ rằng không đáng được nói đến, không đáng được giáo giới.”

「那是事实,盖西!如来不杀生。然而,凡应该被调御的人,以柔软达不到调伏,以粗暴达不到调伏,以柔软加粗暴达不到调伏者,如来认为他不应该被交谈、不应该被教诫,同梵行的智者也认为他不应该被交谈、不应该被教诫,盖西!在圣者之律中,这是杀:『当如来认为他不应该被交谈、不应该被教诫,同梵行的智者也认为他不应该被交谈、不应该被教诫时。」

Greater Coucal ©Ashin Sopāka 2016

Winds

spotted-dove-juvenile-23-jul-16“Just as many diverse winds
Blow back and forth across the sky,
Easterly winds and westerly winds,
Northerly winds and southerly winds,
Dusty winds and dustless winds,
Sometimes cold, sometimes hot,
Those that are strong and others mild—
Winds of many kinds that blow;

“So in this very body here
Various kinds of feelings arise,
Pleasant ones and painful ones,
And those neither painful nor pleasant.

“But when a bhikkhu who is ardent
Does not neglect clear comprehension,
Then that wise man fully understands
Feelings in their entirety.

“Having fully understood feelings,
He is taintless in this very life.
Standing in Dhamma, with the body’s breakup,
The knowledge-master cannot be reckoned.” – SN 36.12 (Bodhi)

“Yathāpi vātā ākāse,
vāyanti vividhā puthū;
Puratthimā pacchimā cāpi,
uttarā atha dakkhiṇā.

“Sarajā arajā capi,
sītā uṇhā ca ekadā;
Adhimattā parittā ca,
puthū vāyanti mālutā.

“Tathevimasmiṁ kāyasmiṁ,
samuppajjanti vedanā;
Sukha­duk­kha­samup­patti,
adukkhamasukhā ca yā.

“Yato ca bhikkhu ātāpī,
sampajaññaṁ na riñcati;
Tato so vedanā sabbā,
parijānāti paṇḍito.

“So vedanā pariññāya,
diṭṭhe dhamme anāsavo;
Kāyassa bhedā dhammaṭṭho,
saṅkhyaṁ nopeti vedagū”ti.”

“Giống như giữa hư không,
Gió nhiều loại thổi lên,
Từ phương Ðông, phương Tây,
Từ phương Bắc, phương Nam.

“Gió có bụi, không bụi,
Có gió lạnh, gió nóng,
Có gió lớn, gió nhỏ,
Gió nhiều loại, thổi lên.

“Cũng vậy, trong thân này,
Khởi lên nhiều cảm thọ,
Lạc thọ và khổ thọ,
Bất khổ bất lạc thọ.

“Khi Tỷ-kheo nhiệt tâm,
Tỉnh giác, không sanh y,
Do vậy, bậc Hiền giả,
Liễu tri tất cả thọ.

“Vị ấy liễu tri thọ,
Ngay hiện tại, vô lậu,
Thân hoại, bậc Pháp trú,
Ðại trí, vượt ước lường.”

“ကောင်းကင်၌ အထူးထူးအပြားပြား များစွာသော လေတို့သည် တိုက်ခတ်ကုန် သကဲ့သို့လည်းကောင်း၊ အရှေ့မှ လာသောလေ, အနောက်မှ လာသောလေ, မြောက် မှ လာသောလေ, ထိုမှတစ်ပါး တောင်မှလာသောလေ, —မြူမှုန်ပါသောလေ, မြူမှုန်မပါသောလေ, အေးမြသောလေ, တစ်ခါတစ်ရံ ပူသော လေ,လွန်ကဲပြင်းထန်သောလေ, အားနည်းသော လေဟု ဆိုအပ်သော များစွာသော လေတို့တိုက်ခတ်ကုန်သကဲ့သို့လည်းကောင်း —ထို့အတူပင် ဤခန္ဓာကိုယ်၌ သုခဝေဒနာ၊ ဒုက္ခဝေဒနာ၊ ဥပေက္ခာဝေဒနာတို့သည် ဖြစ်ကုန်၏။

“အကြင်အခါ ရဟန်းသည် ထက်သန်သော လုံ့လရှိ၏၊ ဆင်ခြင်ဉာဏ် ‘သမ္ပဇဉ်’ မဆိတ်သုဉ်း၊ ထိုအခါထိုပညာရှိရဟန်းသည် ဝေဒနာအားလုံးတို့ကို ပိုင်းခြား၍ သိ၏။

“ထိုရဟန်းသည် ဝေဒနာတို့ကို ပိုင်းခြား၍ သိသော် ယခုဘဝ၌ ပင် အာသဝေါ ကင်းကွာနိုင်၏၊ လောကုတ္တရာဓမ္မ၌ တည်သော ရဟန္တာဖြစ်၍ ခန္ဓာကိုယ်ပျက်စီးသော် ဘဝသုံးပါး၌ ဖြစ်သူဟူသောအရေအတွက်သို့ မရောက်ရတော့ချေဟု (မိန့်တော် မူ၏)။”

Spotted Dove 24 Apr 16「犹如种种风个别在虚空中吹起,
东方的与西方的,北方的又南方的,
有尘的与无尘的,有时冷的,有时热的,
强的与微的,个别的风吹起。

同样的,就在这身体中,诸受生起,
乐的、苦的生起,以及那些不苦不乐的。

但,当热心的比丘不疏忽正知,
因此那贤智者遍知一切受。
遍知受后,他当生是无烦恼者,
以身体的崩解,站在法上,明智者难以被描述。

Spotted Dove ©Ashin Sopāka 2016

Faults

banana-flower-10-aug-16“Let none find fault with others;
let none see the omissions and
commissions of others.
But let one see one’s own acts,
done and undone.” – Dhp 50

“Na paresaṁ vilomāni,
na paresaṁ katākataṁ;
Attanova avekkheyya,
katāni akatāni ca.”

“သူတစ်ပါးတို့၏ မလျော်သော အပြစ်အနာအဆာတို့ကို မကြည့်ရှုရာ၊
သူတစ်ပါးတို့၏ ကောင်းမှု မကောင်းမှု ပြု မပြုကို မကြည့်ရှုရာ၊
မိမိ၏ ကောင်းမှု မကောင်းမှု ပြု မပြုကိုသာလျှင် ကြည့်ရှုရာ၏။”

“Không nên nhìn lỗi người,
người làm hay không làm.
Nên nhìn tự chính mình,
có làm hay không làm”

“不探查他人过错,
不管他人已作,未作,
只应该察觉自己做了什么是,
什么是尚未作。”

Banana Flower ©Ashin Sopāka 2016

Chop Down Tree, Dig Up Roots

Yellow Vented Bulbul

“Just as a tree, though cut down,
sprouts up again if its roots remain uncut and firm,
even so, until the craving that lies dormant is rooted out,
suffering springs up again and again.” – Dhp 338

“Yathāpi mūle anupaddave daḷhe,
Chinnopi rukkho punareva rūhati;
Evampi taṇhānusaye anūhate,
Nibbattatī dukkhamidaṁ punappunaṁ.”

“ခိုင်မြဲသော ရေသောက်မြစ်ကို မဖျက်ဆီးဘဲ ‘မနုတ်ဘဲ’ ပင်စည်ကို ဖြတ်သော်လည်း သစ်ပင်သည် တစ်ဖန် ပေါက်ရောက်စည်ကားပြန်သကဲ့သို့ ဤအတူ ကိန်းအောင်းနေသောတဏှာကို မဖျက်ဆီးအပ်သေးသည်ရှိသော် ဤ (ပဋိသန္ဓေ နေရခြင်းစသော) ဆင်းရဲသည် အဖန်ဖန် အထပ်ထပ် ဖြစ်ရ၏။”

“Như cây bị chặt đốn,
Gốc chưa hại vẫn bền
Ái tùy miên chưa nhổ,
Khổ này vẫn sanh hoài.”

“如果只砍伐树,而不断除它坚固的树根,则树会再生;
同理,如果不断除爱欲的根本,则苦会再起。”

Decisions and Impermanence

MahaBodhi Myaing SayadawOnce, there was an 80 year old monk who lived alone in a monastery. The monastery was just outside the village, far enough away that the villagers were concerned that should anything happen to the Sayadaw[ref]In Myanmar, “Sayadaw” is a term of respect for senior, much revered monks[/ref], they would not know and could not help.

So, the Sayadaw proposed that he would strike the temple gong rapidly to signal when there were any problems. The villagers were satisfied with this solution and went home.

A few weeks later, at around 4 am, the villagers were awakened to rapid gonging coming from the monastery. Blurry from sleep and worried for their beloved Sayadaw, they rushed to the monastery.

Upon arrival, they saw the Sayadaw sitting quietly, and apparently contentedly, in meditation. After some time, the Sayadaw, with a half-smile on his face, slowly opened his eyes.

The villagers said, “Sayadaw, we heard the gong and rushed here to see what the problem was!”

Sayadaw replied, “I have made a decision.”

Curious, the villagers asked, “What decision, Sayadaw?”

Sayadaw replied, “I have decided to remain a monk the rest of my life!”

Photo: Mahabodhimyaing Sayadaw on alms round (not the monk in this tale); from internet, photographer unknown